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<h4><a name="SNA" id="SNA"></a>What is Social Network Analysis?</h4>
<p>
A <em>Social Network</em> is the social structure which facilitates communication between a group of <em>actors</em> (individuals or organizations) that are related somehow (i.e. by common interests, shared values, financial exchanges, friendship, dislike, etc). 
For instance, your friends and you form a social network. But, social networks operate on many more levels, from family relations and disease spreading up to the level of company strategies, social movements or even nations. 
Furthermore, research in many scientific areas has shown that social networks are important when we study the way problems are solved, diseases are spreaded, organizations are run, and the degree to which individuals succeed in achieving their goals.
</p>
<p>
<em>Social Network Analysis</em> (SNA) is a beautiful blend of Sociology and Mathematics, composed of various interdisciplinary techniques for the study of such social networks. 
SNA researchers conceptualize social relationships in terms of <em>nodes</em> and <em>edges</em> (links) in <em>mathematical graphs</em>. 
Nodes represent the individual <em>actors</em> within the networks, while edges visualise the relationships between those actors. 
The result is graph-based structures which are often very complex. 
</p>
<h4><a name="SocNetV" id="SocNetV"></a>What is SocNetV?</h4>
<p>
Social Network Visualizer (SocNetV) is an open-source project to build a flexible and user-friendly, cross-platform tool for the analysis and visualisation
of social networks, targeting primarily the social researcher. The application offers an easy and <a href="gui.html">intuitive User Interface</a>.
</p>
<p>
SocNetV lets you construct social networks with a few clicks on a virtual canvas or load networks of various formats 
(<a href="formats.html#GraphML">GraphML</a>, <a href="formats.html#GraphViz">GraphViz</a>, <a href="formats.html#Adjacency">Adjacency (Sociomatrix)</a>, <a href="formats.html#Pajek">Pajek</a>, <a href="formats.html#DL">UCINET</a>, etc) 
and modify them to suit your needs.
<p>
The application can compute all the basic network properties, such as <a href="analysis.html#Diameter">graph diameter</a>, and <a href="analysis.html#Distance">geodesic distances</a> (shortest path lengths),
as well as more advanced structural statistics, such as node and network centrality and prestige indices (i.e. <a href="analysis.html#CC">Closeness Centrality</a>, <a href="analysis.html#BC">Betweenness Centrality</a>, <a href="analysis.html#PP">Proximity Prestige</a>, etc), clustering and triads (<a href="analysis.html#Coefficient">clustering coefficient</a>, <a href="analysis.html#TriadCensus">triad census</a>) etc.
</p>
<p>
Various layout algorithms (i.e. <a href="visualisation.html#Energy" target="2">Energy-based</a>, <a href="visualisation.html#Circular">in circles</a> and <a href="visualisation.html#Level">in levels</a> according to various centrality indeces) are supported for meaningful visualisations of your networks. 
Furthermore, <a href="gui.html#Random">random networks</a> (Erdos-Renyi, Watts-Strogatz, ring lattice, etc) can be created with a few clicks.
</p>
<p>
SocNetV is a work in progress and is being developed in C++ and Qt, an open-source, multiplatform GUI development toolkit.
<br />You can run SocNetV on Linux, OS X and Windows.
<br /><br />
To download and easily install SocNetV, there are binary packages available and instructions in the project webiste "<a href="http://socnetv.sf.net/downloads"  target="_blank">Downloads</a>" area.

</p>



<h4><a name="Install" id="Install"></a>Installation</h4>


<p>
The latest version  of  SocNetV  can  be  found  at  <a href="http://socnetv.sourceforge.net"  target="_blank">http://socnetv.sourceforge.net</a>.
It is distributed  both in source code and binary packages for Linux distributions, and executables for Windows. 
Mac OS X users may run SocNetV either through a disk image prepared by us, or by using the Fink project. See instructions below.
 
</p>

<h5><a name="Compile" id="Compile"></a>Source Code Compilation</h5>
<p>
In any Linux distribution, to compile SocNetV from source code, you need the Qt5 and QtWebKit development libraries installed - most Linux distros offer Qt5 via their package manager. At the least, you will need the following packages: 
- openSUSE: libqt5-qtbase, libqt5-qtbase-devel, libqt5-qttools, libQt5WebKit5, libQt5WebKit5-devel <br />
- Fedora: qt5-qtbase,qt5-qtbase-devel, qt5-qttools, qt5-qtwebkit, qt5-qtwebkit-devel <br />

If you have Qt5 and QtWebKit installed, download the archive with the source code from the <a href="http://socnetv.sourceforge.net/downloads"  target="_blank">Downloads menu</a>, untar it, enter the new directory, and compile with the following commands:
</p>

<p class="code">
tar zxfv SocNetV-1.XX.tar.gz <br />
cd socnetv  <br />
qmake<br />
make<br />
sudo make install<br />

</p>	

<p>
In Windows, to compile SocNetV, you need to have installed Qt5 development files, and a compiler, like MinGW. If you wish you can avoid compilation, by using the Windows XP executables we offer (see below). 
</p>
<p>
To avoid compiling in Linux, we also offer binary packages for Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Mandriva and openSUSE available from <a href="http://socnetv.sourceforge.net/downloads"  target="_blank">the project's website</a>.
Debian users may prefer the SocNetV version in the debian unstable repository. 



<h5><a name="Debian" id="Debian"></a>Debian packages</h5>

<p>
For Debian &amp; Debian-derived distros, a (not always updated) version of SocNetV is in the 'stable' repository (thanks to Serafeim Zanikolas). 
Add  the line:
</p>
<p class="code">
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ stable main
</p>
<p>
to your sources.list; save it, then type in:
</p>
<p class="code">
sudo apt-get update <br />
sudo apt-get install socnetv
</p>





<h5><a name="Ubuntu" id="Ubuntu"></a>Ubuntu packages</h5>
<p>
Ubuntu users may use <a href="https://launchpad.net/~dimitris-kalamaras/+archive/ppa"  target="_blank">our repository</a>.
All you have to do is add the following lines in your /etc/apt/sources.list file: <br />
</p>

<p class="code"> 
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/dimitris-kalamaras/ppa/ubuntu "version" main<br />
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/dimitris-kalamaras/ppa/ubuntu "version" main
</p>

<p>
where "version" is your version of Ubuntu, i.e. gutsy. <br />
Then save it, exit the text editor, and type in:
</p>
<p class="code"> 
sudo apt-get update <br />
sudo apt-get install socnetv
</p>

<p>
This repository is signed with <a href="http://keyserver.ubuntu.com:11371/pks/lookup?search=0x61AE869C37A4FCC5A73FD02EE088941209CFE071&op=index"  target="_blank">61AE869C37A4FCC5A73FD02EE088941209CFE071</a> OpenPGP key.

Until you add the PPA's key to your own system, you'll see warnings that you're downloading from an untrusted source. To add our PPA's key to your system, open a terminal and enter this command:
</p>
<p class="code">
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 61AE869C37A4FCC5A73FD02EE088941209CFE071
</p>
<p>
If you want more information about keys and repository signing in Ubuntu, read <a href="https://help.launchpad.net/Packaging/PPA#Adding a PPA to your Ubuntu repositories"  target="_blank">the official instructions</a>.
</p>





<h5><a name="openSUSE" id="openSUSE"></a>openSUSE packages</h5>

<p>
For openSUSE and Novell SLED, you may download binary RPM packages from our <a href="http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/oxy86/"  target="_blank">our repository</a>.
When you download the RPM, become root user and install it, like this:
</p>

  <p class="code">
    su
    rpm -ivh socnetv-1.1-1.i586.rpm
  </p>



<h5><a name="Fedora" id="Fedora"></a>Fedora packages</h5>

<p>
Fedora and RedHat users may download binary RPM packages from our <a href="http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/oxy86/"  target="_blank">our repository</a>.
Afterwards, become root user and install the package, i.e.:
  <p class="code">
    su
    rpm -ivh socnetv-1.1-1.i586.rpm
  </p>








<h5><a name="Gentoo" id="Gentoo"></a>Gentoo builders</h5>
<p>
Markos Chandras (<a href="http://hwoarang.silverarrow.gr/?p=193"  target="_blank">hwoarang</a>) added SocNetV into the '<a href="http://github.com/gentoo-qt/qting-edge/tree/master">qting-edge</a>' <a href="http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/overlays/userguide.xml"  target="_blank">overlay</a>, which also houses new Qt4 and KDE4 software. To install the qting-edge overlay type in this command:
</p>
<p class="code"> 
layman -a qting-edge 
</p>



<h5><a name="Windows" id="Windows"></a>Windows executables</h5>
<p>

To run SocNetV in Windows, just download the latest SocNetV zip for Windows from the Downloads menu, unzip it, and double-click on the "socnetv" executable.
The program will run immediately.

Warning: the Windows version is not properly tested. But feel free to notify us for any bugs you encounter!

</p>


<h5><a name="Mac" id="Mac"></a>Mac OS installation</h5>
<p>
If you are a Mac user, you can download and run SocNetV from a disk image (dmg file). Head over to project's "Downloads" area, download the .dmg file. Once downloaded, double click on it and the double click on the SocNetV executable which will appear inside the disk image.

Alternatively, you may install and run SocNetV using Fink. Fink is like "bringing linux to Mac" - you install some base programs and files, and then you can install applications like SocNetV. Please note that we do not maintain nor support the SocNetV version in Fink!

Anyway, SocNetV is in the unstable section of Fink. Therefore, you will need to configure Fink to use the unstable. You'll find useful instructions for this here:
http://www.finkproject.org/faq/usage-fink.php#unstable

After that, you only need commands like these (I think!):
<p class="code">
sudo apt-get update <br />
sudo apt-get install socnetv
</p>
</p>

<h5><a name="Development" id="Development"></a>Development version</h5>
<p>

If you want to test the latest/current development version of SocNetV, check it out using this command (you need the git package installed in your computer):
</p>
<p class="code"> 
git clone git://git.code.sf.net/p/socnetv/git socnetv-git
</p>

<p>
or download the latest tarball from the <a href="http://sourceforge.net/p/socnetv/git/ci/master/tarball?path=/trunk"  target="_blank">Sourceforge git repository</a>. Then, type in the commands:
</p>
<p class="code"> 
cd trunk<br/>
qmake
make <br/>
socnetv
</p>
	
<p>
Please note that this version is <em>not always stable</em>.
</p>


<h4><a name="RunOptions" id="RunOtions"></a>Execution Options</h4>
<div class="text">
If you run SocNetV from the command prompt, there are three (at the moment) options:
<p class="code">
       --version | -V
</p>
	      Displays the version of the program.

<p class="code">
       --help | -H
</p>
	      Displays a short help message.

<p class="code">
       file.net
</p>
	      The name of the file you want to open.



</div>

